Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

As we get closer Mac Pro - peoples thoughts

2012 12 Core Mac pros will hold their value very well, especially when you will no longer be able to buy them easily, and extremely fast new GPU solutions become available.
 
All the OWC refurbs are '09 models. I wouldn't buy an '09 model at this point... If you already have one, great. If not, I wouldn't recommend starting down that road.
 
So do you think we'll see a 4K Cinema Display to go along with the announcement? What good is a slick-looking computer without a matching monitor to go with it?
 
David Kudell said:
So do you think we'll see a 4K Cinema Display to go along with the announcement? What good is a slick-looking computer without a matching monitor to go with it?
Click to expand...

Possibly. There is a new Sharp 4K panel that entered full production a few months ago that seems to be a slightly lesser version - on paper anyway - of the panel currently used in the 4K monitors but not in any way that would make you not want to buy a monitor with it. Someone is using it for something.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
All the OWC refurbs are '09 models. I wouldn't buy an '09 model at this point... If you already have one, great. If not, I wouldn't recommend starting down that road.
Click to expand...

Hey Jeff, did you know the Mac pro 2009 (4,1) can be flashed to a 5,1? Doing so will allow the full use of 2012 Xeons (hexacores for 6 and 12core) and 1333 ECC ram. The difference they found between the 2009 and 2010+ are basically firmware. Or maybe you meant a 2009 is just too old of an model to start off with.
 
Jett He said:
Hey Jeff, did you know the Mac pro 2009 (4,1) can be flashed to a 5,1? Doing so will allow the full use of 2012 Xeons (hexacores for 6 and 12core) and 1333 ECC ram. The difference they found between the 2009 and 2010+ are basically firmware. Or maybe you meant a 2009 is just too old of an model to start off with.
Click to expand...

Yep, it's the same logic board, just update the firmware and you have a Mac Pro 5,1... And then you can upgrade CPUs and RAM. That said, you're better off starting out with a 5,1 model since you can get some really good deals right now on used ones with decent CPUs and don't need to go through the upgrade circle jerk thing. Maybe if you find a super killer deal you can go for it, but any way you slice it, you would be spending a lot of money to upgrade to "new" CPUs that are still 2 generations old. I still say forget the '09. If you already own one and find a good deal on CPUs, it may not be a bad upgrade.

All things considered, I think the existing Mac Pro tower is just not that interesting or worthy to spend a bunch of time and money on now. Even the 5,1 model. Sure, it has PCIe slots and the new Mac Pro does not. Other than that, you're gaining nothing. It's crippled compared to newer systems with its lack of PCIe v3 and the RAM still tops out at 1333MHz triple-channel, dual-channel if you use all RAM slots or exceed a certain capacity (64GB+ I believe). It may have slots, but you lose one right off the bat for your GPU. External storage takes another slot. No USB3.0 without PCIe, No Thunderbolt, No 10Ge or Infiniband or FC without PCIe cards... The new Mac Pro may may lack the PCIe expansion, but we already have fast on-board flash storage, dual GPUs along with six TB2 ports and quad USB3.0. We can add 10G3, Infiniband, Fiber Channel, external RAIDs, etc.. easily via Thunderbolt.

Old Mac Pro is attractive to those who have peripherals needing to be supported that way. New Mac Pro is a paradigm shift and should be rather attractive to those building up a new workstation setup from scratch. I'll get a Thunderbolt 2 PCIe expander for a new Mac Pro once they're available. I'll probably put a Rocket-X and perhaps a SAS/SATA host adapter in it. Other than that, I don't know what else I'd need PCIe cards for. And I'm not so sure how necessary the Rocket-X is going to be for all things. I have two on order, but I may just go with one and put it in a PC like the Z820...
 
Last edited:
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Old Mac Pro is attractive to those who have peripherals needing to be supported that way. New Mac Pro is a paradigm shift and should be rather attractive to those building up a new workstation setup from scratch.
Click to expand...
I think these are very wise words. If the present repeats our experiences from past new hardware changes from Apple, they'll be giving away the old Mac Pros in another year, and it'll be harder and harder to run new software on them.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Old Mac Pro is attractive to those who have peripherals needing to be supported that way. New Mac Pro is a paradigm shift and should be rather attractive to those building up a new workstation setup from scratch. I'll get a Thunderbolt 2 PCIe expander for a new Mac Pro once they're available. I'll probably put a Rocket-X and perhaps a SAS/SATA host adapter in it. Other than that, I don't know what else I'd need PCIe cards for. And I'm not so sure how necessary the Rocket-X is going to be for all things. I have two on order, but I may just go with one and put it in a PC like the Z820...
Click to expand...

How about a black magic 4k card for editing and resolve?

I'm hoping tomorrow is the day, and we know when we can get order.
 
I'm assuming a lot of people will complain that the Mac Pro's are overpriced. I doubt they'll be less than $2499-$2999 for the base config.
 
Starting at 3, 000 dollars for a quad core. No suprises there.

Si much for all the talk here of a mac pro priced to sell to the masses.
 
D Anderson said:
Starting at 3, 000 dollars for a quad core. No suprises there.

Si much for all the talk here of a mac pro priced to sell to the masses.
Click to expand...

You're talking about a 3.7 Ghz with 12GB of RAM and dual GPUs optimized for OSX. That is a great deal IMO!

Edit: Not to mention that just the name "Pro" would tell you that it's not going to be aimed at the masses.
 
"Mac Pro: Starts at $2999. 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon, 12GB DRAM, Dual FirePro D300, 2GB VRAM each, 256GB SSD."

What happened to the VRAM? I thought they were supposed to be at least 3GB per GPU,
seems like they'd be starved as even a single Titan has 6 GB VRAM...

Hope they have an upgrade option on VRAM...

 
This is going to cost BIG bucks to get the way I want it but not a suprise.
 
John Bellari said:
"Mac Pro: Starts at $2999. 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon, 12GB DRAM, Dual FirePro D300, 2GB VRAM each, 256GB SSD."

What happened to the VRAM? I thought they were supposed to be at least 3GB per GPU,
seems like they'd be starved as even a single Titan has 6 GB VRAM...

Hope they have an upgrade option on VRAM...
Click to expand...


Just found my answer:

[TABLE="width: 591"]
[TR]
[TD="class: ti, align: right"]10:34 am[/TD]
[TD]Dual workstation GPUs, AMD FIrePro graphics, up to 4096 stream processors, dual 384-bit memory buses, up to 12GB of GDDR5 VRAM, 528GB/s total bandwidth, up to 7 teraflops of compute power[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: ti, align: right"]10:33 am[/TD]
[TD]Fastest ECC memory, 1866Mhz DDR3ECC, four channel controller, up to 60GB/s bandwidth, up to 64GB user accessible RAM[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]


OK, so it's "UP TO 12GB VRAM" and "UP TO 64GB", there we go...
 
Would be nice to know how much the 12 core, 12GB GPU RAM model is going to cost so we can budget.
 
Can anyone confirm if the GPUs and CPUs are soldered in? Like we have to kit it out when we buy it, at apple prices and have no third party options? I see the ram is user changeable, which is a good start, but man it kinda burns me if everything else is soldered and I have to buy it all through Apple at their price points with no options to change down the road... I liked buying cheap bare bones in the past and kitting it out as needed as my needs grow or the machine becomes outdated
 
Brian Merlen said:
Can anyone confirm if the GPUs and CPUs are soldered in? Like we have to kit it out when we buy it, at apple prices and have no third party options? I see the ram is user changeable, which is a good start, but man it kinda burns me if everything else is soldered and I have to buy it all through Apple at their price points with no options to change down the road... I liked buying cheap bare bones in the past and kitting it out as needed as my needs grow or the machine becomes outdated
Click to expand...

GPUs are removable. I don't know about the CPUs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top